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Open House

In February, we began serious roof work on the house. This is supposed to be an annual procedure for tiled homes, where the tiles are cleaned and refitted in place, to prevent rainwater from seeping in. It is also horribly expensive (and it is increasingly difficult to find experienced roof workers) so most homes do this daunting exercise once in a few years. Ours is quite a large old home and like most old homes, opening up one area reveals problems that you didn’t anticipate. In our case, it was the discovery of two termite eaten beams, hollow and fragile. We had major pest control done four years ago, so while there were no termites, the beams had to be replaced. Guess what this means? Major bucks and a whole lot of chaos.

The beams were in the attic over our bedroom, with a wooden false ceiling nailed to it. To get access to the beams, we had to remove the false ceiling. What a waste! The false ceiling wood was old and fragile as it is and not much was salvageable. Heartbreaking stuff, these old houses, I tell you.

Once the new beams were put in place (a herculean effort involving ropes and lots of workers), the new false ceiling was commissioned and took two weeks to put in place. We took the opportunity to conceal the wiring in the bedroom and to paint it a bright mango colour with all the woodwork in white (where it was brown earlier –not sure if it is a sensible choice given our levels of dust, but it looks really nice).

The tile work progressed slowly and two and a half months later, the workers have moved on with only little odd jobs remaining now. I’m hoping for an April shower so we can test for any leaks. But fingers crossed, we’ll have a dry monsoon this time.

But look at these images – we had a few days of being open to the sky and it was gorgeous!